Many of you would be familiar with the Kspace gallery at the Museum – it’s a very popular attraction for our young visitors and it’s had a long life, having been here since the Museum opened its doors in 2001. However, with age it’s become increasingly difficult to maintain and the time has come time for it to be re-imagined and renewed.

2014 is set to be a big year – we are starting to design and build a new on-site interactive digital experience for children and families. It’s taken some work to get us to this point, and as the first post for the Kspace redevelopment project I thought it’d be good to recap this briefly:

In October 2012, the Museum agreed on a set of guiding principles for the project, and we started planning and scoping the project.

Then we began researching concept options and talking through ideas with staff and audiences.

We used ideas from those sessions to brief four interactive design consultants who would then help us develop multiple concepts.

It was then time to review each concept against the guiding principles of the project; the result was a shortlist of three concepts.

We then sought feedback from audiences and staff on which had the most potential as a fun and engaging replacement for Kspace; one concept was clearly preferred.

An early concept image of the new Kspace

In mid-2013 we went out to tender for a production company to work with us on the project. As those in Government would be well aware, this process can take some time, but we were thrilled to be able to confirm Spinifex Group as our contractor late last year. Spinifex are collaborating with a number of sub-contractors on the project: Wingrove Design and Oblong Design for the design of the physical space, Lamond Building for the fit-out and fabrication works, and Wizard Projects for specification of the hardware environment.

The new experience will involve visitors building their own robot to travel back in time to a mystery place and time in Australia’s history. Here visitors will receive a mission, each unique to where they’ve been transported, and they will need to work together with team-mates to complete the mission before their time runs out and they’re transported back to the Museum.

We’re pretty excited by the reactions of children to our emerging concept. It’s going to be good fun!